A Taste of the Amazon: My Favorite Foods and Drinks in Ecuador

A Taste of the Amazon: My Favorite Foods and Drinks in Ecuador

By: Luke Simcox, Program Director ‘24-’25

Since I first arrived in Ecuador three months ago, I have had the opportunity to try many new foods and drinks for the first time. As someone who loves trying new foods, this has been one of my favorite parts of my stay these last few months. In this blog post, I would like to highlight some of my favorite local foods of the Amazon. 

One of the biggest surprises was getting to try all of the fruits that I had never seen before in my home country, the United States. First, plantains are super popular and included in many local dishes. For example, it is included in the typical breakfast called “majado”. During a two week homestay I spent with a family in Shandia, I ate majado multiple times and enjoyed it every time. Plantains are also used to create chucula, a drink that is frequently mixed with milk. Its sweetness made it an instant hit in my mind. I also got to try cacao, passion fruit, naranjilla, soursop, and guava for the first time. 

When I was living in my homestay, my family went to retrieve guava from a tall tree. One of the sons climbed up the tree and used a large stick to knock the guava to the ground. It was a very memorable experience for me, since I had never seen someone climb such a trall tree nor eaten guava. 

I also tried cassava for the very first time. Called “yuca” in Spanish and “lumu” in Kichwa, it is a staple in Kichwa cuisine and present in a wide variety of dishes. Its texture reminds me a bit of a starchier baked potato. It is also on the side when I order maito de tilapia, another typical dish. To prepare this dish, the cook roasts the fish inside a tent of maito leaves, giving it a distinct flavor. It is then served with salad and cassava. Unlike the United States, fish here is always served with the skin, head, tail, and bones intact. 

One of my favorite new beverages is called guayusa. It is made from the leaves of a type of holly tree, and also contains caffeine. I find it quite tasty, and once accidentally drank a bit too much. I ended up feeling quite jittery for a few hours. These are just some of my favorites, but I have also tried many other foods and drinks. 

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Summer Intern Dispatches

Our Summer Interns have been working around the clock to make magic happen in Shandia. They’ve spent time planning an awesome Summer Camp for local students in their vacation time from classes. They’ve working on trails and helped with various sustainability and environmental programs. They’ve shadowed with doctors, helping with data analysis and note taking. They’ve cooked meals. They’ve created community. And they’re on their ways to being the next social change agents in their communities.

Swim Time

Week 1, we enjoyed a day at the local swimming hole! It's not uncommon in Ecuador that people don't learn to swim - this was a great opportunity to have fun and learn what can be a life saving skill!

Fun in the Sand

It's not a camp week if you don't spend some time on the beach. Campers practiced their architecture skills through sand castles!

Camp Portrait

Summer Intern Amaya and Administrative Coordinator Maria Jose posing with with our little social change makers before camp.

Beach Day

Summer Interns Amaya and Nora playing in the water with our campers.

Victory

Summer Intern Ethan with campers after an afternoon of games on the cancha.

Sand Excavation

Gotta get a little dirty or it's not a good day at camp!

Treasure Hunt

The week's big activity was a nature themed scavenger hunt, complete with cleaning up trash and everything else to make a more beautiful Amazon Rainforest!

Crowns

Because everyone deserves to be royalty! We made craft crowns to wear around camp.

Week 1

By Amaya Reddy (Summer Intern ‘24, Bowdoin College)

This week, we began our month-long summer camp program. Led by our three interns–Ethan, Nora, and Amaya– this program is meant to provide campers with fun, educational activities throughout their summer break. This week, campers separated into three teams to compete in a nature scavenger hunt. The competition was intense, as each team rushed to pick up trash, find chickens, and take pictures. Despite the valiant effort of the Tigres and the Tigerones, the Lobos ultimately finished in first, with a whopping margin of 30 points.

Week 2

By Patrick Maluwa (Program Director ‘24, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources ‘23)

Hello, Tuesday! We have chosen this day to gather and have dinner together as volunteers in the house. I am very grateful and excited for Tuesdays because I can't wait to taste the diverse meals from my fellow volunteers representing different countries. On this day, I have had the opportunity to teach how to prepare our Malawian staple meal, Nsima, and I have also enjoyed a deliciously cooked pasta made by an Italian volunteer not only that but I also had the pleasure of tasting a traditional German dish called Reibekuchen and many foods just to mention a few.

Week 3

By: Nora Parker (Intern ‘24 University of Richmond)

This past weekend, Ethan, Amaya and I cooked Indian lentils and puri with the women's group in Shandia. A group of women came over to Casa de Susy for the afternoon and we taught them how to make lentils with Indian spices and red chili peppers. We then showed them how to make puri (fried flatbread). These cooking classes are suppose to work as cultural exchanges, so the last time they did this, these women taught us how to cook made Maito de Tilapia and an assortment of other dishes. It was certainly challenging trying to explain the recipe in Spanish but it was a really interesting experience and the food turned out good!

How to Make Chocolate: Amazon Rainforest Edition

From Chakra to Hershey: How Your Chocolate is Made

We all love chocolate, but in most parts of the world it’s so distanced from where it starts out — a little cacao plant on a (less) little tree in someone’s chakra in Ecuador. Okay, not all chocolate is Ecuadorian chocolate. But many is and maybe it should be! Regardless - chocolate. We want to talk about how one of the most important Kichwa ancestral crops becomes one of the world’s favorite desserts.

1. Harvesting the cacao beans

In the Amazon Rainforest, there is a lot of cacao! In the Kichwa communities, many people are sustenance famers - meaning that they depend on their land for food and life. This can mean everything from yucca and maiz (corn) to medicinal plants and cacao.

The most important for this process, however, are the cacao trees. Cacao trees produce cacao pods (or the fruit), which are harvested by hand always. Each cacao fruit contains between 20 and 50 cacao “beans” which are covered in a sweet, white pulp - think like a lychee!. Shandia farmers usually use machetes to cut the ripe pods from the trees, which needs to be done carefully so that the pods don’t break open or otherwise hurt the more delicate beans inside.

Picture of a cacao pod from Berta’s chakra in Shandia. Presented alonside other delicious fruits and vegetables found in Kichwa chakras.

2. Fermentation stage

Once the pods are off the trees, they are opened to remove the beans and pulp. The pulpy beans are then placed in shallow containers, often covered with banana leaves, to ferment for several days. Although this step is sometimes skipped, it helps deepen the beans' flavor as the process of fermentation allows natural yeasts and bacteria to break down the pulp. It will also result in a much less bitter bean and a more creamy and sweet chocolate. When done, this step typically takes about five to seven days.

3. Drying the beans

After fermentation, the beans are spread out under the sun to dry. In the Amazon Rainforest, this is usually seen on the side of the road. People will allow their beans to dry in the hot Amazonian sun. Even being at the equator, it is a slow process and can take anywhere from one to two weeks. During that time, the cacao farmers have to routinely turn the beans so that they are completely dried. The drying process reduces moisture in the beans, which in turn prevent mold and prepares them for storage and transport.

In the Amazon Rainforest, this is usually the last stage that the farmer would do. After this, the farmer tends to sell the beans to local chocolate companies to be commercially made into chocolate bars. Sometimes the beans that come out of the local chakras can even go globally.

Dried beans, ready to be roasted and prepared.

4. Roasting the beans

But now comes the good part - the part that gets closer to eating and happens with Manna’s team not infrequently!

So once the beans are completely dried, they are roasted to bring out their rich, chocolatey flavor. Roasting temperatures and times can vary depending on the desired flavor profile, but typically range from 250 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes. When we do this, we will start a big (not that big) bonfire in the Shandia Ecolodge and take turns stirring until the cacao smells delicious.

The point of roasting is to not only enhance the beans' flavor but also makes it easier to separate the outer shell from the inner nib, the next step.

The ever serious art of roasting the beans.

5. Cracking and Winnowing

After roasting, it’s time to crack open the beans and remove the outer shells, leaving behind the cacao nibs. Technically, this process is called winnowing. The nibs are the edible part of the cacao bean and are packed with the final taste of the chocolate.

Winnowing those beans

6. Grinding

The cacao nibs are then ground into a thick paste called cocoa mass or cocoa liquor. This can be done using stone grinders, crank grinders, or even fancy modern machines. At Manna, we don’t have anything fancy, but we have a really nice simple machine that the lodge lets us use that grinds the nibs into the past. The grinding process is important because it releases the fat within the nibs, known as cocoa butter. This is usually where we stop at this stage when we’re doing a chocolate demonstration because we usually make fondue and it’s very yummy, but keep going to see how the bean goes from the paste to a bar!

The mixture of cocoa solids and cocoa butter is then refined further in a process called conching (for those taking notes at home), which involves continuous mixing and aeration to develop a smooth texture and enhance the flavor. This step can take several hours to days, depending on the desired quality of the chocolate.

Grinding is usually a two person job

7. Tempering

Tempering is a crucial step in chocolate bar or chocolate solids making because it ensures the chocolate has a smooth, glossy finish and a satisfying snap when broken — although, again, this depends on the culture that the chocolate comes from and the desired texture (Mexican stone ground chocolate, for example has a very different texture — the process might be slightly different!) Tempering involves carefully heating and cooling the chocolate to stabilize the cocoa butter crystals. The tempered chocolate is then poured into molds to create bars or other shapes.

8. Cooling

Finally, the chocolate is cooled and solidified in molds. Once it has hardened, it is removed from the molds and is ready to be enjoyed as a solid. Our good friend at the lodge, Enrique, who leads many demonstrations and other neighbors in Shandia are avid chocolatiers who will go on to this step to make delicious truffles and other chocolates for consumption!

Or if you don’t want to wait to temper and and cool, just eat it fresh like fondue with a bit of milk stirred in. You can’t go wrong!